The Skillful Teachings of Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

The Skillful Teachings of Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

“The chants we do in the evening, before the meditation, are meant to put you in the right frame of mind to do the meditation, pointing out skillful ways of thinking. Whether we're contemplating the body; issues of aging, illness, death, and karma; thoughts of goodwill; reflection on the nature of the world: All of these thoughts are designed to remind you of how important it is to meditate. They also remind you of your motivation for meditation. Whether you're here to find something solid in the midst of the world, or as an expression of goodwill, it's useful to remember — each time you sit down to meditate or do walking meditation — why you're doing it, the importance of what you're doing, so that you do it with an attitude of proper respect and attention. In other words, you don't just go through the motions. You don't treat it casually.

This is important work we're doing here — a point that's easy to forget. So we keep reminding ourselves, because thinking like this is an integral part of the meditation. People often believe that we're trying to learn how not to think, or trying to get the mind away from its conditioning simply by stopping any language from going through the mind. But the Buddha's instructions on meditation involve a lot of thinking, training the mind to think in skillful ways. But unlike psychotherapy — which tries to trace your thoughts back to their origins, where they're coming from in time — he focuses on where they're going, where they lead. Do they lead you where you want to go? And he gives some recommendations on ways of thinking that really help you go in the right direction.

As you carry through with his ways of thinking, part of your mind is going to rebel. For example, when you develop thoughts of goodwill there may be a little voice in the back of the mind saying, "Well, I don't really feel goodwill for these people." Or, "I don't give a damn about where my thoughts are leading, I want to think about //this//." Don't assume that the purpose of these exercises in directed thinking is to smother up those other thoughts, or to pretend they don't exist. Actually, the purpose of the exercises is to dig the problems up, bring them out into the open. If the question of how you think about the beings in the world isn't brought up, you can sail merrily along with all sorts of mixed motives, all sorts of mixed attitudes, not really being aware of what you're doing, or of how your attitudes are coming out in your actions.

Or if you have that apathetic feeling, "It doesn't really matter what I do, so I might as well just do what I like" — it's good to know that it's there. Then you can deal with it." 

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Resistance", Meditations3, 

https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/CrossIndexed/Published/Meditations3/041025%20M3%20Resistance.pdf?fbclid=IwAR05AqmXrLK1PEe_OvYA4Y4m2BlgNrSwFcBM0hEe9C0bK5qsRFbI8NZ3fhk